


Confession

by MSSmysterygirl



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 04:36:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11501892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MSSmysterygirl/pseuds/MSSmysterygirl
Summary: Elsa's mouth moves before her judgement.  What will Anna say?





	Confession

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story months and months ago. Originally, I had planned for it to be the beginning of Come Back To Me, but the opening scene of that story grabbed me and I ran with it and then never could bring myself to connect back to this. So this could be the "prequel" for that, if you like, or it could just stand on its own. Rated M because.. well.. incest. I don't know. I couldn't bring myself to rate it any differently. :) Also because maybe I'll add on to it in the future. Who knows! Again, as always, this work is published sans-beta/proofreader, so please forgive any typos or errors or things that don't flow. -MSS

Elsa felt the words bubbling up in her throat like a champagne bottle that was opened too quickly.  She might have clamped her hands over her mouth to keep them in if she’d thought it would have done any good.  She had the distinct and unmistakable flash of white hot realization that she wasn’t necessarily going to be able to control or take back what she was about to say.  Heaven help her, she was going to say it _all._

The irritation and disappointment was written all over Anna’s lovely face as she turned to leave.  Her hand was on the doorknob, getting ready to turn it when Elsa’s voice, at long _long_ last, made its entrance.

“It’s because I love you.  I’m _in love_ with you, Anna of Arendelle.  I love that your favorite food is strawberries even though you hate getting the seeds in your teeth.  I love that you hate the smell of lavender and that your nose wrinkles up a little bit whenever you smell it.  I love that you snore when you sleep on your right side but not on your left.  I love your pinky on your right hand because it’s a little crooked from the time that you shut it in the castle door when you were four.  I love that you knocked on my door every winter without fail when it would snow.  You never even knew that sometimes I would help it along and make it snow earlier because I wanted to hear your voice through the door.  It made me less lonely to know you still cared.  After all the time I ignored you and pushed you away, you _still_ wanted to build a snowman with me!  And that after all that _shit_ I put you through before and after my coronation, you’re still standing here today, talking to me, loving me, although probably not the way I love _you_ , and I don’t deserve you one little bit!  But I really, _really_ wish that I did!”

The silence in the room was deafening.  Anna’s eyes were wide and her mouth hung open just a little bit.  Elsa could swear she didn’t even see her sister breathing in that moment.  She couldn’t decipher the look on Anna’s face, other than interpreting it as pure and utter shock.  Elsa felt numb, too spent to even conjure up an emotion.  Elsa didn’t think she could have found it in her to freeze a single molecule of water in that instant, although her blood itself seemed to have turned to ice.  _What have I done?_

Wrapping one arm around her middle, Elsa folded in on herself in a way that made Anna’s heart bleed.  Her strong, powerful, _vulnerable_ sister was standing before her, sobbing, after confessing her _love_ for her.  Anna’s pulse pounded in her ears.  Could she have heard that right?  Could it possibly be true that Elsa, after everything that happened and despite the fact that they were _sisters_ , for God’s sake, had the same feelings for her that she had for Elsa?  Could she really love Anna in the same context that Anna loved _her?_   

“Elsa,” she whispered, much as she had done after Elsa’s unintentional unleashing of her powers in the ballroom at her coronation party.  Right at that moment, however, Anna would have had a very hard time decided whether she was more shocked that Elsa could shoot ice and snow out of her fingertips or that Elsa was, apparently, in love with her.  It really was a toss-up.

“Just go,” Elsa’s voice cracked painfully as she turned away from Anna, sure that she was about to be shot down in a most unpleasant way, and likely regarded as a disgusting excuse for a person hereafter.  A frost half an inch thick appeared on every surface in the room.

In that moment, the last thing Elsa expected was to feel Anna’s hands on her shoulders, turning her back around to face her.  Those same hands came to rest on either side of her neck, thumbs gently smoothing over the skin just beneath her jaw bone on either side.

“Elsa,” Anna whispered again.  “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, Elsa’s startlingly blue eyes raised up to meet Anna’s teal ones.  They held there for about a second before dropping back down.  Anna ducked down a little bit until she was back in Elsa’s line of sight.  “Please, look at me.”

This time Elsa’s gaze didn’t waver.  She had a steely look of resignation on her face and Anna knew she had reconciled herself to whatever was coming, though Anna could be pretty sure Elsa had no earthly _idea_ what she was about to say.  

Come to think of it, Anna had no earthly idea what to say either.  One of the questions that had long plagued her mind was, _how on earth does one tell her sister she’s in love with her?_   Well, Elsa had answered that question pretty succinctly just moments ago in true Elsa style - loud, powerful and shocking.  Anna couldn’t get over the irony.  Quiet, regal, beautiful Elsa had the loudest, biggest, most dangerous temper of anyone she’d ever known.  

Not that Anna was without feist — Marshmallow could attest to that up at the ice castle, and so could Kristoff for that matter — but her temper was more of a flash fire where as Elsa’s was a slow burn to an explosion.  Or a slow freeze.  Whichever.

“I—I’m really not sure what to say,” Anna said, and clearly _that_ was the wrong thing to say because Elsa’s eyes immediately clouded over and she winced, despite having done her level best to prepare herself for whatever her sister would say.

“It’s okay,” Elsa murmured to the floor, or to Anna’s boots, Anna couldn’t be sure exactly where Elsa’s gaze lay.  “You don’t have to say anything.  I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” Anna’s firm voice interrupted the Queen.  “That isn’t what I mean.  I’m not sure what to say because, well, I’ve been trying for ages — _ages_ , Elsa — to come up with _something_ to say but I never can.  So I’m just going to try, okay?  And I need you to listen because I have no idea how this is going to come out.”

The blonde head nodded minutely.

Anna dropped her arms and walked to the window, resting her hands on the sill, staring out into the late September evening.  The lanterns on the castle walkway were just being lit, and Anna watched for a minute as two men whose identities Anna couldn’t quite make out in the twilight went from lantern to lantern, bringing more light to the castle grounds.

“I’ll listen,” Elsa’s voice sounded strained.  “But you have to actually _say_ something.”

“Sorry.”  Without turning around, Anna took a deep breath and began to talk.  “It was a long time ago, right before Mama and Papa… you know… that I started questioning my, uh, _feelings_ for you.  You’re my _sister,_ Elsa.  I thought it was so wrong.  But then after they were gone, I saw you a few times when you’d come out of your room.  I don’t think you knew I was there.  But I saw you and you looked so broken.  So sad.  So small.  Not like the sister I remembered who took care of me and made me laugh and played outside in the snow with me when we were kids.”

Anna paused a minute, smirked.  “Although I guess we actually played _inside_ with the snow, didn’t we?”  

Elsa let out a sharp exhale that might or might not have been a laugh.  

“But all I wanted,” Anna continued, “was to run up to you, hug you and never let you go.  The pain — hell, the _agony_ I was feeling was exactly what I saw on your face but you were so far away from me, Elsa.  You were miles away in the same castle.  I couldn’t get through to you.  So I just decided to pretend that it didn’t matter.  To pretend that I didn’t feel the way I felt because God knows we both had enough to deal with at the time without adding being in love with you into the mix.”

At this point, Anna turned around and found Elsa’s eyes studying her.  She leaned back against the windowsill, crossing her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling chilled.  “I don’t know how I feel now,” she said quietly.  “But I know one thing for sure.  I am quite certain that the way I feel about you is _not_ how sisters should feel.”  At the end of all that, Anna met her sister’s gaze.  “I love you Elsa.  I’m _very_ sure about that.”

In two steps, Elsa was across the room and in Anna’s arms.  One hand cradled the back of Anna’s neck while the other was wrapped around her waist in a decidedly unsisterly fashion.  Her lips were right next to Anna’s ear.  “I did,” she whispered.

“You did what?”  Anna asked into Elsa’s neck.

“I did know you were there.  After Mama and Papa died.  And all _I_ wanted was to run over and hug you and tell you that everything would be okay.”  A light snow started to fall in the room, snowflakes peppering both their heads as well as all the furniture, the floor and the bed.  “But I couldn’t.  You needed me, Anna, and I wasn’t there.”

Anna jerked her head back and stared into Elsa’s eyes, her eyebrows descended just a little.  “You were protecting me,” she scolded.  “Or at least you were trying to.”  That brought a small wince from Elsa, so Anna quickly added, “that’s not the same as not being there.  You had my well-being in mind.”

This was true.  Elsa couldn’t deny that.  “Still,” Elsa’s eyes hit the floor again.  “I should have done something different.  I should have told you.  I knew you were hurting but I just couldn’t.  I just didn’t know what to say.  I was so scared of hurting you again.”  Her voice was a whisper by the end of the last sentence.

“Hey.”  Anna grabbed Elsa’s face and tilted it up until their eyes met.  “You’re not hurting me now.  And you never will again.  I forgave you for all of that a long time ago, Elsa.  I’m not going to take it back.”

They stood there, quiet, in each other’s arms for several moments.  Elsa was the next to speak.  “But—I thought you— I thought you and Kristoff were…” Her voice trailed off and she hardly dared to breathe, waiting for Anna’s reply.

“Well,” Anna let out a long exhale, her cheeks rounding slightly.  “We kind of were and kind of weren’t.  I did like him.  I mean, I _do_ like him…”  Her heart cracked a little at the utterly devastated, albeit fleeting, look on Elsa’s face.  “However.”  A glimmer of hope flashed across Elsa’s pale, crestfallen face, and Anna could almost see her color improve.  “That’s all it was.  I _liked_ him.  That is not, I repeat, _not_ , how I feel about you.  What I feel for you goes so far beyond ‘like’ that it’s not even in the same category, almost.  At any rate, I broke it off with Kristoff a while back.  I didn’t want to hurt him, and I could see where it was heading.”

“How did he do with that?”  Elsa cared about Kristoff, too.  Without him, the events of the previous summer would have had a whole different outcome, suffice it to say.  Kristoff’s heroic actions and pure heart were not unnoticed by most Arendellans, including Anna and Elsa.  That and his adorable reindeer.

Anna considered the carpet.  “He… wasn’t happy.  But he was glad I didn’t wait to tell him any longer than I did.”

“And how are you two doing now?”

“We’re okay.  I just saw him this morning, in fact.  He said to tell you hi.”

Elsa smiled, despite the serious nature of the conversation.  “Well, hi back.”

Without hesitation, Anna pulled Elsa closer and rested her head against her sister’s shoulder.  She relaxed a little when she felt Elsa’s fingers trailing gently up and down her spine. “I love you Elsa.  I always did.  It just took me a while to figure out which _kind_ of love I felt for you.  It wasn’t until your coronation and… everything afterward that love even became a real concept to me.  Everything I thought I knew about love was just so… insufficient.  Olaf kindly pointed that out to me.”  Her fingers tightened reflexively around the fabric of Elsa’s dress when she remembered that day.  “But I’m learning that love really doesn’t have rules.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” Elsa mused, her hands stilling on Anna’s lower back, fingers spread to cover as much space as she could.  “I guess I was just as clueless as you, seeing as how my inability to grasp the concept of love caused that whole situation in the first place.”  A small huff of a laugh, and then, “although, the fact that love thaws would have been a nice detail for the old troll to tell me way back then.  That would have saved a lot of trouble.”

Anna snickered.  “Yeah, and it’d have been nice if he’d told me the fact that it was _me_ that had to perform the act of true love in order to thaw my heart that day.  I almost died because I had it all wrong.  Too many fairy tales, I guess!  People should really say what they mean.  And trolls, too.”

“You did die,” Elsa said quietly, tightening her grip on Anna, afraid that if she let go that Anna would suddenly disappear or turn to a block of ice.

“Yes, well,” Anna said.  “Details.”  Then, “Elsa… don’t think about that.  You’re freezing the room and my feet to the floor.”

Elsa looked up, startled.  The pale blue ice was indeed creeping its way up the walls.  “Sorry,” she sighed, closed her eyes and willed the ice to dissipate.

“I love you Elsa,” Anna said again.  “I showed you that day and I’d do it again a thousand times.  I’ll show you every day from now until forever.  Just promise me you’ll never forget it.”

“I promise.”  

Tears glittered in Elsa’s eyes and Anna couldn’t handle that.  She pressed a soft, chaste kiss to Elsa’s cheek, just below her well-defined cheekbone.  “I’ll show you in lots of ways, but give me just a little time to get my head around this.  I promise I’m not going to run away.”

Elsa decided she could live with that.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
